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Union: Cancel Mexico outsourcing conference or we’ll protest

Boeing Union Machinists are calling on organizers of a conference promoting outsourcing of aerospace work to Mexico to cancel the event or face protests.

“Our union is committed to growing Washington aerospace, not standing back and watching as it gets picked apart by foreign interests,” Tom Wroblewski, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 751, said in a news release Sunday. “We’re not going to let anyone come into our backyard and poach some of our state’s best-paying, high-skill manufacturing jobs.”

The MexicoNow Aerospace Industry Conference is scheduled for Dec. 3, at the Hilton Seattle Airport Hotel & Conference Center. It promises to allow participants to, among other things:

If organizers do not cancel the conference, Machinists stand ready to protest outside the event and all Seattle-area companies that take part, including Boeing, GE Aerospace and Cushman & Wakefield, the union said. Conference organizers could not be reached for comment Monday.

The union said two similar conferences proposed in Wichita, Kan., over the past year were canceled after Machinists there threatened protests.

Here’s the text of a letter the Machinists Union sent to MexicoNow Editor Sergio Ornelas.

Dear Sr. Ornelas,

I’m writing to ask that you cancel MexicoNow’s plans for the Mexico’s Aerospace Industry Conference planned for Dec. 2 at the Hilton Seattle Airport.

Our union is united in opposition to the continued outsourcing of American aerospace jobs. For generations, members of our union and other aerospace workers have been world-leaders in the industry, and this generational knowledge gives America a unique competitive advantage. We will not allow this advantage – built over decades and supported by generations of American taxpayers — to be squandered by corporate CEOs seeking a short-term advantage to boost their quarterly profits.

That is why we plan to protest most strongly any effort by your organization to take aerospace jobs away from the state of Washington, or any other American state. We will take our protests to the street, and to the highest corridors of power in both Washington state and Washington D.C., exercising our American rights to free speech, free assembly and to freely petition our government leaders.

Given that, we see no good can come out of your planned Dec. 2 event. Going forward with it, in fact, would only cause tension and animosity between our two great nations, which should be working together to solve our common problems and not plotting to steal jobs from one another in a zero-sum contest.

That is why I’m asking asking, respectfully, for you to cancel the conference, and to never consider holding another one within Washington state’s borders, ever again.

If you don’t cancel it, I’ll see you at the Hilton on Dec. 2, where my fellow Machinists and I will be clearly expressing our opposition to your attempts to undermine this key American industry.

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